Sublime seasonal dishes ripe for the picking with Rory O'Connell

There is a time and a place for every ingredient, says chef Rory O'Connell who has just written a new cookery book

Rory O'Connell. Pictures: Clare Keogh

LET'S start with Rory O’Connell’s pomegranate moment. A friend bought him one that had come all the way from Turkey, via Lelia’s grocery shop in London, and delivered the gift – “like special cargo” – to Cork.

On the outside it looked quite ordinary, but when the co-founder of Ballymaloe Cookery School prised it open, it blew his mind. The seeds were the intense ruby colour of jewels, and the taste – “deeply sweet and deeply sour at the same time” – sent him off to an imagined palm-shaded oasis where the fruit had been harvested at just the right time.